Taylor Update Sunday January 30th, 2011

Well I have been racing around doing all of a number of things, so have not been the best blogger. Taylor is actually doing very amazing, although she has been battling colds, and ear infections, but those are fairly "normal" kid stuff.

After Taylor's trip to Disneyland she became hooked on Toy Story. She has all three shows and can watch them all day long...she wakes up demanding "woody", comes home "woody"...you get my drift. Taylor is also doing a fabulous job talking and can parrot really well. I joked that when I babysat her to my husband that maybe I could teach her some "choice" phrases she could stun Mindy and Landon with, but thought better of such a silly idea.

Taylor has another MRI February 8th with the results being gone over on the 17th. Please make sure to keep Taylor in your prayers, send her wishes and hopes, these are such amazingly hard days waiting to find out what happens next.

St. Valentine's Day Hair Massacure!

So Landon and I have decided to help raise funds and awareness for the St. Valentines Day Hair Massacure this year. We have both died our hair HOT PINK and are collecting online pledges and/or cash/cheque pledges in person. If you would like to learn more about the Hair Massacure or donate to the cause - please go to www.hairmassacure.com You can pledge a participant and look up our team " A Wish for Taylor" or search for Landon or Miranda Thiessen to see our pages.

It has been quite a while since the last post as there hasn't been much to report on the medical side of things. Taylor had a wonderful Christmas with Family and Friends, has been growing so fast. She is in love with Toy Story (1, 2 & 3) and asks to watch "Woody" first thing in the morning, all day, and all night if it isn't on already. She has been talking up a storm learning new words daily and picking things up so quickly that we really have to watch what we say around her, since she repeats almost everything.

Her next MRI is on February 8th, with our results meeting scheduled for February 17th...but as usual, hopefully we get some news before then, as it is too long to wait! She has been going in for her other checkups and tests regularly, and they continue to be amazed by how unaffected she seems to be by everything she has been through - a true blessing!

Things are finally starting to slow down a bit from all of the excitement of the trip and Christmas, and with all of the snow we have had and the colds and flu bugs that have been going around, it feels as if we haven't had a moment to catch our breath...so hopefully we will be able to actually start visiting some of you that haven't seen us in a while!

Hopefully we will get some time to post some updates on here soon...but just for those of you who wanted a sneak peak...now you know :)

Love,
Mindy, Landon & Taylor
XOXOXOXO

MRI Results...official!

Well although everyone may know from my prior posts that Taylor's last MRI was clear, however their official meeting was today. Basically what they told them (Mindy and Landon) was that they see NOTHING in this scan...no flags, etc. Everything was perfect, not even a smudge on the MRI! Hurray. Speech Pathologist thinks she is doing great and the Neuro-Psychologist was amazed at how "grown-up" she is. Of course everyone was in love with her and sung her praises....but she is pretty darn awesome.

So I have not had a chance to ask Mindy fifty thousand questions...I will though and hopefully update you. I still want to find out about their action plan on MRI's...will they be extended to 6 months, or do they still have to be done every 3 months? I also wanted to know what they thought about taking her to either St.Jude's in the USA or to Toronto where there are some "expert" on her form of cancer (it is still not big where knowledge is concerned, but maybe they would have some insight?) I also worry about any signs that may signal growth, etc. Taylor now getting a tad older, at her whopping 2 years of age, is a bit easier to read some signals in behaviour in relation to "normal". I think there are always questions.

I am just so thankful. Taylor has gotten to go on her wish vacation, she has pretty much completed her wish list, thanks to all her supporters, angels here on earth. I get to babysit this Saturday...apparently she can be a tyrant, so I may relive my babysitting her when she was 6 months old playing strange...LMAO.

They are home!

Well yesterday Mindy, Landon and Taylor all returned from their journey. It was a long trip home, layovers, etc. Mindy was back at work today. Hopefully I will get some news or more stories to share when I see her this weekend.

Thanks to the tremendous support of everyone who made Taylor's wish come true! It is so phenomenal that everyone has reached out and helped touch Taylor's life!

Last Day in SanDiego

Well, we had a pretty uneventful day yesterday, we have been so tired and Taylor has been a bit of a tyrant as well...so we have been kind of looking forward to coming home.

We found a new suitcase to bring home all of our goodies, checked out a marshall's and a Target and ended up finding a little shop that sells bags and purses and luggage for SUPER cheap! Went shopping at fashion valley mall...a bit out of our price range...all designer stores with a few others like gap, banana republic, etc thrown in the mix. Landon wouldn't let me go to Macy's or blooming dales for fear of what I might find! There were lots of shops I could have shopped in if I was rich...but alas...that isn't in my cards!

So we decided to just watch toy story 2 and ordered a pizza...it was a very lazy day!

So today we made sure to get up a bit earlier, had our breakfast and headed down to the beach to put our toes in the ocean and play in the sand, it was a great start to the day! Taylor was scared of the water every time it would come up she would cry or run away if she could...it was too funny! The water was absolutely freezing!!!

So after the beach we took some showers and headed out on an adventure to the safari park! We kept getting lost as the signage was terrible and there were too many paths, but we eventually found our way to the safari tour of Africa! It was totally worth the trip...a 30 minute tour through the open park setting...it was pretty cool!

So we headed home and Taylor had a great nap, we decided to lay low for the night...massages are tonight and then maybe a soak in the pool and packing up for our journey home tomorrow!

Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed! Landon will pick up our dog Ruby from our friends Brenda and Faye on Thursday, and my birthday is on Friday!

See you all soon!!! This will be our last post for a while!

Love,

Mindy, Landon & Taylor

Xoxoxo

Day 7 SanDiego

So this morning we did our continental breakfast at the hotel and then headed out for the day's adventure...Sea world!

It was a quiet day there thank goodness, and we got around fairly quickly, although the show times were quite spread out over the day...if we missed an early show, the others weren't until the end of the day...we thought we could make it...but Taylor was grumpy and we were exhausted by about 3:30.

We watched the shamu show which was fantastic...brought back all my memories as a child and sitting in the splash zone and getting soaked! We decided to play it safe and sit up in the higher stands...a very good choice considering the cooler weather.

We also got to play with some dolphins, pet some star fish and sea urchins, fed and pet some manta reys which was super cool! We fed some sea lions, and Landon got swindled by a pelican...those guys are aggressive around the sea lions feeding area...they kept swooping around us trying to steal our fishes for the sea lions!!!!

We did a few more tours and had lunch, but packed it in and came back to the hotel for a nap. Our room was being cleaned, so we decided to take a walk out on the sea wall, and we booked ourselves some massages for Tuesday evening! Landon has never had a massage before...and his back is killing him from carrying taylor on his shoulders all the time and carrying all our stuff!

So we had a nap and set out on an adventure to find supper...the place we wanted to go to turned out to be more of a pub, so we tried to find another place...found one...it was okay, nothing fabulous...but whatever!

So we moseyed back to the hotel and decided to go swimming. It was nice and sheltered, and Taylor had so much fun jumping off the edge of the pool into our arms, we finished things off with the hot tub and showers for the family and bed time.

Taylor is flopping around in her bed talking to herself as we watch a movie on the tv...planning on going to the safari park tomorrow and maybe hitting the beach for a bit!

Love you all, see you in a few days!

Mindy,Landon & Taylor

Xoxoxo

San Diego Day 6

Well, today was pretty casual...we crawled out of bed and went for breakfast...conveniently located right next-door to our room! Then we decided to go for a dip in the pool and sent Taylor for a nap.

Landon sent me to the front desk to find out how much it would be for a rental cab, or how much it would be to get to the various sites we want to visit...and I ended up signing us up For a rental car for 4 days! Lmao

So Landon went with the agent from enterprise to fill out the paperwork and I figured out where we were going to spend the rest of the day!

So...Landon came back, we decide to head to Las America's outlet centre at the Mexico border...literally we could have thrown rocks over the 30 foot High barb wire fences and huge metal gates! LMFAO Landon was wondering what I had gotten us into!!! We were clearly not from around there...population of Latin/Mexican/Spanish type folks was considerably higher than any other nationalities...the people at mcdonalds barely spoke English :). It was fun though and everyone was friendly! There was actually staff in the stores and they were working and friendly and helpful...weird! Like the good old days!

So we headed home after what seemed like the longest day of shopping ever! We didn't even hit half of the stores I am sure...but we spent enough money and were tired!

Stopped at the cvs pharmacy again...Landon needed some icy hot back cream and we needed to grab some Taylor snacks...Landon had a good chat with a homeless man while waiting in the car with Taylor as she napped in the back...he was telling landon how nice canadians are, and that the women are amazing and nice...not like the glorified prostitutes down here lmfao...and that the cops are CRAZY...he he...anyway, landon told me to jump in the car and locked the doors x

So anyway, Landon told me to hurry and get in the car and he locked the doors and we drove away...like two seconds to the gas station...lol. It was very dramatic lol

So...there are some very strange people around here...lots of people that look nuts!

We ended up just ordering pizza in our room instead of going out for supper...too tired! I totally forgot to ask for plates or napkins...and we have NOTHING but Kleenex in our room lol...so that was interesting...

Anyway, can you put some feelers out to see if anyone knows how we should send stuff home...we clearly don't have enough room in our suitcases...

Love you lots, tomorrow I think will be sea world or the zoo...not sure yet!